I kind of wish that everyone had a writer in the family who could do for their history what Anne Berest is able to do for her own in The Postcard, beautifully translated by Tina Kover. This book, which I can best describe as a blend of autofiction and historical fiction, is an attempt to fill in gaps and bring back to life relatives who were murdered in the Holocaust. Berest also seeks to understand how her grandmother, Myriam, survived; asks questions about what it means to be Jewish; and wrestles with continuing anti-Semitism. This book is extraordinary in its depth and sensitivity and vibrancy.
The catalyst for Berest’s exploration of her family’s history is the arrival of a mysterious postcard. The card contains the names of Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, great-aunt, and great-uncle. All four were murdered at Auschwitz. The card is addressed to M. Bouverais, which might refer to either her own grandmother or her step-grandfather. When it arrives, Berest begins to question her mother, Lélia, to learn what she knows about what happened to the Rabinovitch family before and during World War II—and how Myriam escaped their fate.
The amount of research that Léli was able to find is astonishing, considering the efforts made by the Nazis to cover up their crimes and of the French and Vichy governments to side-step their collaboration with the Nazis. In the second half of The Postcard, there are several heartbreaking moments when Myriam and Lélia run face-first into stonewalling by the French government. Myriam was constantly put off with white lies that her family would come back if she was just a little more patient. Years later, Lélia would have to deal with contradictory documentation on what happened to the four Rabinovitchs.
Berest takes her mother and grandmother’s research, blends it with wider research about the French Resistance, the history of French anti-Semitism, her memories, and her talents as a writer to create dialogue and scenes that help us imagine what it might be like to be hunted across France, to be persecuted, to be pushed towards industrialized death. Even though I know that there’s no way that Berest could know what her relatives actually said to each other or what, for example, Myriam’s thoughts were as she huddled in the trunk of a car as her mother- and sister-in-law helped her escape from Paris to Vichy-controlled Provence, it’s impossible to resist the veracity of what Berest writes.
I can’t praise The Postcard highly enough.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
I really loved the book, but it annoyed me that it was described as a novel, so I had no idea what was fiction from what was real.